Evaluate the Contribution made by feminist and post-structuralist perspectives to a view of gender as socially constructed. Discuss the implications of this view in relation to one of the following: work, education or the family.

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Evaluate the Contribution made by feminist and post-structuralist perspectives to a view of gender as socially constructed. Discuss the implications of this view in relation to one of the following: work, education or the family.

A number of fundamental changes have occurred this century in relation to what it means to be male or female. They emphasize the notion that femininity and masculinity are not necessarily innate categorise which pre-exist in each person and focus more on the idea that they are historically and socially constructed and united categories which are found in social institutions, procedures and practises including those of the home, school and workplace. Research has shown that what emerges as maleness and femaleness changes in a fundamental way over time, across cultures and in different socio-economic circumstances. Feminists and Post-structuralists have offered an invaluable contribution towards the idea of gender as a socially constructed and I am proposing to look at how they what they view gender as and the implication of their views in relation to education.

In 1972 Anne Oakley introduced a new concept into sociology she proposed that “sex “ referred to the

“Biological division into male and female” (Anne Oakley: 1972)

And “gender” to the 

“Parallel and socially unequal division into femininity and masculinity” (Anne Oakley: 1972)

 Sex is therefore what you are anatomically born with. Biological classifications of sex being either female or male have faced much criticism over the years for its inaccuracy and ambiguity when it comes to defining sex, and also for its failure to highlight the instances when an overlapping of the two sexes occur. There is an immense pressure for individuals in our western world to take on the gender role of female or male depending upon their sexual classification. Often those born with ambiguous sexual organs have been assigned a sex and successfully become what they were assigned to be, even when the assignment may have later been found to be biologically incorrect. This also works in reverse however where assignment has been incorrectly judged and the individual felt they were the wrong sex. There are also cases outside our western society that do not view gender in the same light as us. The North American Indians Berdache takes part in a ritual to decide their gender. Therefore can we see gender being a social construction to which we follow in order to become either male or female or does sex dictate what we become?

Gender is a harder idea to grasp. It can be viewed as socially constructed aspects of differences between men and women. It is the primary way individuals are identified and identify themselves.

“It has more recently been extended to the symbolic level, cultural ideals and stereo types of masculinity and femininity as well as at the structural level to the sexual division of labour in institutions and organisation not just being studies of individual identity.” (Gordon Marshall: 1994)

Under the post-structuralists mode of thought the belief is that social institutions such as families, work and education shape women and men's lives. Through these ideas they look at how and why some groups benefit more than others do from the way society is structured. Foucalt was a controversial but leading post -structuraist whom contributed greatly to sociology in the 70’s. In ‘The history of sexuality’ 1976 he suggests that structures of knowledge can exert power over social ‘things’ including humans. This idea speculates upon how knowledge and power are organised and supports feminist theory of patriarchy. His post structuralist ideas are therefore popular with feminist as they provide an explanation as to why gender inequality occurs and why it can be seen as a social construction.

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There is also linguistic structuralism, which refers to Saussure's, a Swiss linguistic theorist, work on trying to understand the way language is structured and how this affects our experience and position in society. Language as structure produces two things: subjects who write, speak, and use signs, these individuals are the entities through which language works, and texts which are combinations of signs or signifiers which also serve as bodies through which language works. Subjects hold a large number of positions within the structure of language, two of which are author and reader. Text produces subject position, that is, positions ...

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